diff --git a/dev/create-release/release-util.sh b/dev/create-release/release-util.sh
index c925de9be52d4..9a340528b506d 100755
--- a/dev/create-release/release-util.sh
+++ b/dev/create-release/release-util.sh
@@ -73,7 +73,9 @@ function fcreate_secure {
 }
 
 function check_for_tag {
-  curl -s --head --fail "$ASF_REPO_WEBUI;a=commit;h=$1" >/dev/null
+  # Check HTML body messages instead of header status codes. Apache GitBox returns
+  # a header with `200 OK` status code for both existing and non-existing tag URLs
+  ! curl -s --fail "$ASF_REPO_WEBUI;a=commit;h=$1" | grep '404 Not Found' > /dev/null
 }
 
 function get_release_info {